By Erin Klein

baskets

In October and November managed to get 5 long-standing projects to the finished top stage. Some quilters call them “flimsies” but I don’t like using that word to describe something as wonderful as a finished quilt top. (Just my opinion.) I had set a goal to finish 5 projects before year end, but I should be able to finish up 3 more before the end of the next week — potentially 8 finishes. Granted they are machine pieced and were in various stages of being completed, but I am feeling quite proud of my accomplishment especially since I hadn’t done much quilting in the 12 proceeding months.

This is another scrappy project I have been printing shapes for. This project uses the Inklingo 3 inch Basket Collection. There are 360 basket blocks in my design. This is the third project I want to work on in 2015. (If you have been keeping track of my new starts. Hahaha) There is one more—the Ocean Waves quilt seen here. I have changed the color scheme on that one and am almost finished drawing the applique border. I’ll share details about it later.

The background shapes are printed on scraps approximately 8 x 12 or smaller. Printing Combo1 on an 8.25 x 11.75 piece of fabric gives me 6 sets of background shapes. On a smaller piece of fabric, I just print as many background sets as I can. I have about 250 background sets printed so far.

The basket shapes will be printed with my stash of Stonehenge and Marblehead fabrics. I have more than 60 different ones and I am always adding to them. If I print Combo6 on a 6 x 11.75 inch piece of fabric, I will have 6 sets of basket shapes to mix and match with my scrappy backgrounds. I am going to machine piece the blocks.

There is a basket combo set [Combo7] in the 3 inch Basket Collection that includes a back-basted heart applique. I am thinking of doing 20 or 40 blocks with the heart applique.

I brought a half dozen of these with me to work on. After setting off the smoke detector while pressing other blocks with the only iron I could find here, I decided not to work on anything that would need pressing during the sewing process. (Too scary!) That included my way of prepping the handle shape for appliqueing so I set the basket blocks aside until I get home. I’ll post a few of the finished blocks then.

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Jane’s Baskets is a 3-color, 4-fabric quilt in a horizontal setting. It measures 85 x 85 inches. My inspiration for this quilt is an antique quilt I saw on an online auction website. I pinned it to my Basket Quilts board on Pinterest. You can see it here.

This quilt is named for Catherine Jane [Cormode] Williamson. Jane’s family lived near Ramsey on the Isle of Man. She was baptized 13 April 1828 at Kirk Christ Church in Lezayre. Jane was my second great grandmother. I haven’t been able to find out exactly when the Cormodes arrived in America. The earliest record I have shows them living in Rochester, New York in 1844. Sometime around 1848, Jane married William Henry Williamson. Jane and Henry had at least eight children together. Both died in their 50th year—Henry in 1875 of cholera and Jane in 1878 of albuminuria.